Discussion
This thing about the FAA closing airspace around El Paso and parts of New Mexico, for a week on pain of pain sounds batshit crazy until you remember that it's just across the border from Ciudad Juárez in Mexico.
The Trumpzilla is about to go on a rampage in Mexico, isn't he.
@cstross If Donnie’s planning anything, he’ll have forgotten about it in a week.
Looking like a SNAFU. TFR lifted, per @mattblaze
@wolfinpdx @cstross @mattblaze
Hegseth has apparently gutted civilian liaison roles. Speculation is that FAA essentially defaulted to shutdown for posted duration of testing the Pentagon had announced because they couldn't get anyone at Biggs to talk to them in an official capacity.
So, yeah, crazycakes.
@wolfinpdx @mattblaze Absolutely crazycakes in the USA at this time. Nobody seems to know WTF is going on from one hour to the next.
@cstross the closure has been lifted:
https://apnews.com/live/faa-el-paso-texas-air-space-closed-updates
@cstross may he experience Montezuma’s Revenge
@cstross Found on BlueSky: “CNN reports that ‘a source briefed by FAA tells the El Paso flight ban was driven by military operations from Biggs Army Air Field at Fort Bliss. The FAA acted after the Defense Department could not assure civilian flight safety.’” https://bsky.app/profile/onestpress.onestnetwork.com/post/3meln554tls2a
@cstross There's sort of four possibilities.
Someone is doing something at White Sands (missile range, just north of El Paso) and wants to make completely sure nobody gets a video record out an airliner window.
Someone in the admin wants to feel important.
Someone intends to use the airport for non-commercial purposes; load up Fort Bliss, load up the "East Montana" ICE concentration camp there, etc.
Someone has been disinformed and is (over?) reacting.
@cstross I don't think we have enough information to even suggest which is might be and I'd be loathe to avoid option five, which is "someone wants us to look at El Paso and not $OTHER_LOCATION".
I would right now assume Option Five; we're being disinformed. I'd put "you call that succession planning?" at the top of the list for why, but dying mad king, ongoing courtier power grabs, damaging revelations, etc. It could be nigh-anything. (It could be someone pranking Ted Cruz.)
@graydon It's a distraction from Epstein Island, sure. And the 3 million odd Epstein files that *haven't* been released. Given the shit in the files that *were* dumped, I can't to imagine what worse things are lurking in them.
@cstross You pick an island because it makes corpse disposal really easy.
I think it's been obvious for years that a lot of the abducted kids never left the island alive; I think it's further obvious that Epstein's sponsor ("where did Epstein's money come from?" remains an open question) and heavy cover had to have components of the US state involved. These are trees no one is barking up, to torment the metaphor; in part because the native nazi billionaires involved fear an uprising.
@graydon Yeah.
A sufficiently dark picture would be: Trump funded Epstein b/c he liked throttling kids; Epstein ran a fresh meat disposal operation from his island: the CIA were running it as an intel gathering exercise: the GRU and/or Mossad or similar obtained Epstein's cooperation: every US republican admin going back to GHWB is to some extent implicated.
"The US government has been run by and for paedophile serial killers since the end of the cold war" would be quite a look.
@cstross @graydon just goes to show that reality always eventually gives fantasy a run for its money. Even the dark stuff. Stealing a turn of phrase from a Web review of a 1930s USSR Call of Cthulhu module:
"In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking [Lovecraftian] monsters there."
@cstross Like that, but it's too small.
The central point to all of this, irrespective of rationalization or obfuscation, is a bunch of the great and good who deal with insecurity by doing stuff to prove they can do anything they want. (Emphatically "fuck who they want", but in practice much broader.) No law binds me, etc.
Consider the hate for Obama as a result of Obama being the first president since Carter who wasn't part of the club. Or every intelligence agency functioning as a fiefdom.
It'll be something much worse than killing just one child.
Think on the order of Trump raping a pre-teen on camera, then strangling them to death. Now repeat multiple times, and/or for multiple Trump-adjacent movers and shakers. Then add evidence that Epstein was actively blackmailing them on behalf of a foreign government or three.
Then look for something worse.
@graydon Unlike Reagan Trump doesn't have a court astrologer so I think we can cross that option off the list. Probably. Maybe?
@cstross I expect it's from the relatively short list of courtiers with "speaks with master's voice" tokens for anything complicated happening now.
We can't rule out, I dunno, "Miller does peyote" as an input for strategic planning and operational decisions.
I really feel for the folks trying to produce intelligence assessments about American intentions. You always have to allow for world view but once you have to allow for "despises quantitative analysis" and "formally psychotic", good luck.
@cstross I have the hypothesis that it's designed to minimize airborne witnesses. Maybe something is happening on Castner Range.
I was gonna say "No, because that telegraphs his actions to whomever in Mexico is the target, and only a stupid person would do that."
Then... "stupid"... ok, you may have a point.
@cstross my guess is that it's another attempt at distracting from the Epstein files.
Hope everyone stays safe there.
@cstross
He wants a war.
Of COURSE he wants a war.
The Iranian government has cracked down and is now a hard target (again).
Wise heads at the Pentagon probably looked at Canada's proposed resistance plan, shat a brick, and said "nope" (to going up against NATO-spec Taliban style resistance in the deep freeze with widespread popular support). Greenland is stupidly hard to get to, Venezuela's already done, so that leaves the Mexican cartels (who nobody loves).
@cstross
Every day I say the same thing. WTF America?!?!
@cstross That's even more likely than my two "it's Trump, what do you expect?" guesses.
